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Nature's Pincers. Between the Arctic and the Black Sea lie 3,000 miles of Russian border (see map, p. 24)—as long as the U.S.-Canadian border. The long miles bulge in a great convex arc—incipient giant pincers against Russia. It was to push these pincers as far as possible from Moscow and the industrial area of European Russia that the U.S.S.R. had grabbed buffer areas every time Germany had pushed over a nation on the Soviet border.
The German opening attack struck at every sector of the arc. Only as the attack developed could the main drives be singled out with assurance.
In the far north, the Finnish Front was at first relatively quiet. The tired Finns, though they mobilized, had no stomach for more war. But Germany had for some time been gathering a big troop pool in Norway. This moved up over the top into Finland, maybe directly into Russia.
From East Prussia strong German forces drove north into Lithuania. The Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) afforded a particularly tempting target. Russia seized them in June 1940—as the Germans did after the Red revolt in 1917. The people remain disaffected, and Adolf Hitler made the most of their feelings.
Revolt against the Russians was reported breaking out in Estonia; the Germans set up a puppet Government for Lithuania. If the Germans could quickly sew up the Baltic littoral, they would not only have developed the northern arm of the master pincers; they would also have deprived Russia of bases for her large fleet of submarines, which might prove embarrassing to the German flow of ore from Sweden.
But the area Adolf Hitler has been most interested in ever since he dictated Mein Kampf is the Ukraine (see p. 27). Into the Ukraine many fingers of attack dug forward. As the basis of this attack, and also as the southern jaw of the master pincers, German troops, supported by Rumanians, cut into Bessarabia, the area which Russia grabbed from Rumania in June 1940. Main Russian defenses were behind the Dnieper; Bessarabia looked as easy to take as the Baltic States.
The Russian defensive remained to be developed. Remembering how they beat Napoleon—and perhaps Chiang Kai-shek's defense of China—the Russians have the option of using the size of their country as a weapon to wear down the enemy. On the first day mass flights of Russian bombers attacked East Prussia. But Red withdrawal would eventually be necessary, because the position held by the Russians was dangerous; in the initial phases geography was on the side of the Germans.
Lessons of Finland. Crusty old Paul von Hindenburg once said: "Any general who fights against the Russians can be perfectly sure of one thing: he will be outnumbered." The Germans are outnumbered in this battle. First reports indicated that the Russians had about 175 divisions on the front, to about 130 German divisions—perhaps 3,000,000 Russians against perhaps 2,000,000 Germans.